Quark Gluon Plasma Dynamics

I will discuss recent advances in the understanding of the non-equilibrium evolution of the quark gluon plasma (QGP) as generated during ultra-relativistic heavy ion collisions. I begin with a brief discussion of state of the art analytic calculations of the QGP equation of state. I then move on to discuss the early time dynamics of the plasma, focusing on two aspects of plasmas that possess momentum-space anisotropies: the breakdown of viscous hydrodynamics for highly anisotropic systems and the role of nonabelian plasma instabilities in plasma isotropization. I present a method for deriving dynamical evolution equations for highly anisotropic plasmas and show results of 0+1- and 1+1-dimensional numerical integration of these equations. I then discuss the collective modes of an anisotropic QGP and present recent numerical simulations of the full 3D time evolution of the particles and self- consistency determined color fields of a QGP using the linearized Boltzmann-Vlasov equation.